a writer wanders

The Plan

A lot of amazing things have happened to me this year. I’ve survived an entire term of school living out of a backpack, moved out of my mom’s house, read some incredible books, hitch hiked over 4000 kilometers, bathed in 2 natural hot springs in 2 countries, slept in a shed full of soccer balls in Revelstoke, gorged myself on free cheese in Tillamook, puked off the top of Black Tusk, gotten kicked out of the Space Needle base for trying to make spaghetti, and fallen off the roof of an abandoned Point Grey mansion. I also fell in love with an amazing guy who was my partner in crime for most of those grand adventures.

However, highs of this calibre rarely come without a spectacular personal crisis.The school year is now coming to an end and over the past few weeks, I’ve come to three crushing realizations:

Although I might have finally fallen for the right guy, 6 months before his graduation (upon which he planned to leave the city in search of work as an engineer) was a shitty time to do that.

I don’t like apartments. They’re too much stuff and too much stress. I’m pretty sure that I want to live out of a backpack, possibly forever.

My in-progress fine arts degree is as meaningless as life itself.

Long story— involving more crying in public than anything else— short: I decided to not to spend the next year in Vancouver without someone I could rely on to always be up for an adventure and instead take myself on an adventure. Because why not? So I can have a degree that won’t ever get me a job anyways? That doesn’t seem worth it to me.

Over the course of 12 hysterical hours, I developed a borderline suicidal plan to hitch hike solo to the Caribbean and find a yacht sailing to Europe in need of crew. I explained this to my boyfriend (who’s name is Adrian, by the way) who then asked if he could come with me instead of getting a job. Of course I said yes, and now we have a plan that’s a lot less suicidal and a lot more awesome.

At the end of April, when both of our leases are up, we’re moving in together… into a tent… near the King Edward Canada Line station. We’re going to spend the month living there and working, saving up as much money as possible. Then, at the end of May, we’ll put our entire lives— including the tent— into backpacks and stick out our thumbs.

After that, the plan isn’t too detailed. There are 4 music festivals we want to go to, which are spread out all over— in the US and Canada, in the east and in the west. We’ve already had our work exchange applications for Shabhala and Way Home approved and we’re anxiously refreshing the ‘not yet published’ page for the Electric Forest application. Then, like so many hopeless dreamers, we’re hoping against hope that we can score some Burning Man tickets. Beyond that, we’re thinking we might like to see New York City, there’s a few people in Chicago we want to visit, and we’ll be doing some sailing on the Great Lakes. We’ve got 4 months to fill up, though. So there’s no telling where we might end up!

The budget is $100 per week for 15 weeks and maybe more… wish us luck!